Meeting with My Teacher

Once every few months for the past 27 years I have been meeting with a group at a restaurant at 9th Ave. and 23rd St. in Manhattan. I started going with my first wife. I now go with my second wife. We sometimes meet my first wife there. The group is led by a women, a former psychologist in the New York City school sysem. We discuss philosophy and spiritual issues. After lunch we take a walk, go to a museum or art exhibit, and then we go to dinner where we continue our discussion.

I look forward to these days. Our discussions are very motivating and energizing to me even though I often do not understand what is being said. I have brought a number of friends with me over the years to introduce them to the group and try to get some feedback regarding the quality of the information and the ideas that are presented. I am curious about what others think because I have never been sure whether or not these discussions are crazy or extremely valuable. I must admit that at this point I feel they are valuable, although most of the people I have brought with me are not as convinced. Matter of fact, 99 per cent of people would have no interest in these conversations or think that our teacher was totally whacked out.

We probably spend four to five hours or more talking about the nature of reality. Sometimes we discuss the problems or issues of one of the group members, although personal matters are usually discussed in private with the teacher. Over the years she has given me excellent guidance in regard to business, relationships, and child-rearing . Her advice is extremely practical, straightforward, and in my mind have exemplified an excellent intutitive sense about people and life situations. All of our group value her opinions about ordinary life and have benefitted greatly from her recommendations. I would say we are fortunate to know her. She never charges or requires payment for any of her teaching or guidance although lately we have been chipping in to pay for her meals.

In regard to her spiritual thoughts, this is a little more confusing. She makes a distinction between ordinary life which she calls "the horizontal" and spiritual work which she calls the "vertical". In her opinion what happens in "the horizontal", what happens in our ordinary life is influenced by the "vertical". Matter of fact, our ordinary life is not at all what we think it is and its sole purpose is to serve the "vertical".

The "vertical" or spiritual world is ruled by a hierarchy. This hierarchy consisits of seven separate ashrams or schools. Each school is ruled by an avatar and is responsible for a specific energy. The ashrams work together to help maintain our planet and our universe. When we work on ourselves, when we strive to become more conscious, we are aligning ourselves with the vertical and usually with a specific ashram or sub-ashram.

I'm not sure how much more I should reveal about this teaching, or whether I have revealed too much, or even whether what I have revealed is true or makes any sense. What I will say is that after 27 years of very long conversations I have been given an incredible amount of information. It has affected my thinking and subtly influences the tone and ideas of my blogs. I will have to talk to my teacher and ask her what she thinks.

Esoteric Decisionmaking

It's very difficult to make decisions regarding important matters. I consider important matters to be those that impact your life, those that involve change. People who easily make decisions usually do so out of impatience, boredom, laziness, or, in most cases, fear of the consequences of doing nothing. This is why most of the important decisions are made when we are young and don't know, don't think, or don't care.

One reason that real decisionmaking is rare is that when we get old enough to make an important decision we recognize how poor we are at predicting outcomes, how afraid of being wrong. Also, we are more content living in known conditions (even if they are less than ideal) than experiencing the unknown. Decisionmaking assumes there is a choice involved; for the most part, as we get older, we become more crystallized in our views and real choice is impossible.

Understanding our inability to make real decisions is critical to our personal development, to our ultimate freedom. Real understanding is not just an intellectual knowledge of the meaning of the words. It is also an emotional feeling that resonates within us, stirs us to want to do something. I believe that if we really understand our situation, and our inability to choose what we really want, except when it is accidentally thrust upon us, then we might develop the necessity required for real decisionmaking. We will not want to live one more moment in a state of slavery.

This is a basic idea within the esoteric tradition. It is fundamental to any understanding of spirituality. Spirituality has nothing to do with God, Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons, or the existence of an afterlife. These are topics for discussion; they may be as enjoyable to some as playing Sudoku or rooting for your favorite team. Spirituality is, simply, work on yourself. This work, in the beginning, requires seeing your existing condition, and then as you understand what you, your friends and family, and the world are up against, developing the necessity, the energy and the will for change.

I believe that we are living in a time that is going to require real decisionmaking. Catering to the whims of the masses, doing what is popular, change for change sake, and seeing possibilites as either/or rather than as parts of a larger spectrum of choices will not help us. We need to break free from our existing patterns of thought and action. Actually, I believe, from what I have been taught, and what makes sense, that only a small amount of us need to become real decisionmakers.

It would be valuable if those that see the truth of this can recognize each other and work together. This transcends geography, race, religion, sex, economic class, age, or any of the other ways we classify each other. It is not about forming groups or joining organizations. Those who are interested in real work and willing to let go of those existing beliefs that separate us can make this happen each day in their own small way, in their own lives, with whomever they contact. The consequences of this can be incredible.

Community Action, Esoteric Ideas, and Eavesdropping

I just got back from a meeting of a community action group whose purpose is to train inner city kids in life skills. In attendance were two black muslims, two women, and two community organizers. I was the only white guy. I had previously met with the organization head, one of the woman. I had seen a sign outside her building advertising life counseling. I was cold calling on businesses to introduce my consulting services and decided to check out whether there might be an opportunity for me to get some work. After explaining my background to her (I was a social worker and teacher in the ghettoes of Brooklyn) and giving her a copy of my book she decided that I might be a good addition to her board. She thought I could add diversity so she decided to invite me to the board meeting. In the spirit of not having anything better to do I decided to check out the meeting.

One of the first things I noticed was that I did not feel at all like an outsider. I had spent the entire day at another business discussing the communication and personal problems of the business owners and the employees. The environment at this center seemed a little more upbeat, friendly, and positive much more to my liking than the business I had just left or the average businesses I observe. These people were optimistic and hopeful, opposite of what you might think would be the case in a ghetto business devoted to solving the most difficult of family and children problems

I did notice from the amount of Obama pictures on the wall and from eavesdropping on some of the conversations as I was waiting for the meeting to begin how significant Obama's elections was to the world view and attitude of the members. By the way, I am a professional eavesdropper. After years of practicing this little known art I have perfected it and have learned to eavesdrop on multiple conversations simultaneously. What I have noticed is that most people talk about nothing of relevance.

The easiest and most fruitful places for eavesdropping are restaurants and security lines in airports. These conversations for the most part are nonsensical. Restaurant conversations are mostly about gossip, health problems, or the state of the participants material possessions, especially their homes. Airport conversations are usually boring recounts of places that have been visited or worst of all businessmen checking in with their offices to make sure that assignments are getting done or that arrangments have been made. What annoys me most about these conversations is the urgency and importance that are being attached to these conversations even though most of the products are non-essential and evenly irrelevant. I mean people act like shipments of corkboard or specifications for lampshades are critical to the planets survival.

When the board meeting was actually started one of the Muslims, Juwanda, was asked to present his background and how he felt he could contribute to the board and the organization. He was about my age and told his story about his life on the streets as an activist dealing with prisoners and drug addicts and how he had developed experience in life skills training especially from the prisoners. He mentioned that people in prison have the time, space, and will to actually think about things and because of the this are often in the best position to come up with good ideas about self development and helping the community. The women leader objected a little to this saying that even though she was tremendously busy she found the time, space, and will to come up with good ideas also, and had never been in prison.

I was then asked to tell my story. I explained to the group without the slightest bit of nervousness or even self-consciousness that I had spent the last thirty years working in the business world attempting to bring spiritual values to business. I mentioned that in order to do this I had to understand what were spiritual values. I expressed my view that at the core of all religions was a similar truth, that we were all created from the same source, that we had lost our connection with this source, and that spiritual work in all religions involved returning to the source from which we came. This return began with self-study and getting to see the truth about ourselves and our condition. I said that I believed that all effective self-development programs had to include this element of self-awareness training.

I also expressed the idea that the world was changing and that the old ways of running businesses and becoming successful based on greed, competiveness, and aggression were no longer working. What was needed was a more sincere, sharing, and caring attitude. This leveled the playing field and provided an equal opportunity to motivate ghetto kids and rich kids from white suburbia. They liked this point. One of the muslims pointed out to me, though after I finished my talk that he was not willing to take money from the casinos, no matter how much they were offering. I had no idea why he even said this. For the first time though I had a little self-doubt that he might know about my gambling background, although I had never met him before.

When I got home and reflected on what had happened at the meeting I was happy with the way I presented myself and saw that I can impact people with my ideas, although I wasn't sure that I could really help this group or that I wanted to. I woke up though, in the middle of the night with the idea that a way to help these kids was to create workshops in which the kids are asked to present basic esoteric ideas through art, theater, dance. poetry, song, and story telling. I thought of the Wizard of Oz , the Emperor's New Clothes, and West Side Story as examples of performance and creativity being used as vehicles to express deeper lessons about life. This is not a new idea and has been incorporated within most traditions since the beginning of history. The hard part is to organize it and develop a structure and process through which the kids can be motivated to spend their time creating and expressing themselves in ways that will enable them to get to know themselves better.

I think I'll send an e-mail to the director telling her about this possibility. I'm still not sure whether I want to get involved or not. I'll have to think about it.

Unexplainable Happenings

I started a marketing consulting business in the bedroom of my house. In a few years, it had fifteen employees. I was beginning to get some confidence. I had a plan. I wanted to incorporate spiritual/esoteric ideas into businesses. My income, though, was not great. I had a wife and three kids to support. One of my clients, a division of a Fortune 500 company, Avnet, Inc., wanted me to give up my business; they wanted me to run their company. They offered twice my salary, great benefits, and the opportunity to test my management and marketing theories. Could I bring esoteric ideas to mainstream corporate America? I'd have a budget of over three million per month to use at my discretion. I was a little confused about what to do.

At the same time I was doing psychic research. I was investigating a Spiritualist retreat in Ephrata, Pa. Every year, the leading mediums of the world would come to an old hotel, the Silver Belle, in the outskirts of Lancaster County; they would conduct seances and classes for their believers, people who traveled thousands of miles to communicate with their dead friends and relatives. I was curious. I spent some time trying to penetrate the inner circle, trying to determine what was really going on.

It was a relaxing place, a good place to walk and think. I decided I would take an afternoon off. I spent some time at Silver Belle. Maybe, I thought, I'd discover some insight about my business and career. Upon arriving and walking onto the property I was greeted by an older women who looked at me kindly and said matter of factly: "You look a little troubled son. I see you have mechanics and eyes on your mind."

Now this is the god's honest truth. She had never met me before. The name of the Avnet division was Mechanics Choice; the name of my company was Visions Inc. There was no question that she had read my mind or sensed something about my thoughts. This was a real demonstration of some form of ESP.

Another time I was walking in the West Village in NYC. I passed a phone booth which began to ring . I answered the phone. The call was for me. I told my friend who had dialed the wrong number that I couldn't speak then but I would call him back. I continued to my destination.

Both these stories are indicative of either forces at work that we don't understand or a suspension of the laws of probability. There is definitely much about our world that we don't know. However, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a reality that exists beyond our senses. There are those who don't believe in magical thinking, who remain skeptical to the existence of any phenomena outside of what they consider to be normal, logical, or rational. In my mind this is a limited view. Even then, I see that the acceptance of any "whacked" out theory or happening can be problematic. In the continued exploration and questioning of reality we have an opportunity to make real progress. The question is how to do this in a way that can produce results.